Paper Magazine Lays Off Editorial Staff
Paper magazine on Wednesday pink slipped its entire editorial staff — more than 20 people — in a move that most certainly spells the end of the once buzzy counterculture magazine.
Tom Florio, Paper’s publisher, and editor in chief Justin Moran, had only recently attempted to reinvent the magazine as a leading voice in the queer community. In January, Paper put British Vogue editor in chief Edward Enninful on its cover with an accompanying interview conducted by Enninful’s friend Linda Evangelista.
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Florio, a former top executive at Condé Nast, purchased the then-influential glossy in 2017 from cofounders and coeditors Kim Hastreiter and David Hershkovits, who started the magazine in 1984 as a monthly print product. By then, Paper had run its infamous 2014 cover of a naked Kim Kardashian that catapulted the magazine into the modern zeitgeist. The photo — shot by French photographer, designer and artist Jean-Paul Goude, and itself an homage to an earlier photo of Grace Jones — generated more than 70 million monthly unique visitors to Papermag.com and was a seminal moment in pop culture history.
But like so many other digital publications, Paper was severely impacted by the decline of social media-fueled page views and the consequential ad revenue shortfall.
Sources say Moran will remain until the end of May to shepherd Paper’s final cover through production. Neither Florio nor Moran responded to requests for comment.
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